Pupils from a Co Kildare primary school will travel to Leinster House today to protest a seven-year delay in the completion of their new school building.
Fifth and sixth class pupils at Mercy Convent Primary School, Naas, will deliver letters to Minister for Education Norma Foley asking her to intervene so that the building, which began construction in 2017, can be finished and opened.
The school’s 550 pupils have spent the past seven years being educated in a temporary two-story prefab.
Beside the prefab, separated only by temporary fencing, is Mercy Convent’s almost completed new school building, which lies empty.
This building has been dormant since work to make it weather-tight was completed two years ago.
Before that it lay half built and derelict for three years. €7,500 is being spent every week on 24-hour security at the building’s two entrances, which amounts to €390,000 per year.
The school first applied for a new building in 2012.
Construction began in 2017 and was expected to be completed within two years.
But the contract with the first builder was terminated mid-construction after difficulties arose and the building stood as a shell for three years until March 2021.
During this time windows destined for the 32-classroom building were left lying outdoors.
By the time work began in March 2021 to seal the school, those windows were weather damaged and had to be scrapped and replaced with new ones.
“By the time this building is completed it will be, if not ‘the’ most expensive, then one of the most expensive schools ever built in this country,” principal Cathal Ruane told RTÉ News.
The delay has added considerably to the costs.
From a distance the building looks fully completed, apart that is from the high weeds growing all around it, and the builder’s rubble and fencing.
Inside it is clear that a complete fit-out is required. The walls are unplastered and the stairs are just concrete slabs.
‘They will leave school never having enjoyed a proper school building’
Mr Ruane said the school community is running out of patience and that is why fifth and sixth class children are travelling to Dublin to raise their concerns in person outside Leinster House.
Those sixth class pupils were in Junior Infants when construction on the new school building first began in 2017.
They have spent all of their primary school years looking through a shabby fence at the unrealised promise of a new school.
In all that time their school has had no PE hall or central area and their temporary building sits on what was the school’s playing field.
“We are looking for answers. The kids want their say,” Mr Ruane said.
“They are the ones [the fifth and sixth class pupils] who have lost out. They will leave the school never having had the chance to enjoy a proper school building.”
This part of Kildare has seen significant population growth as young families moved into new estates in the area.
Some 95 Junior Infants are enrolled to join the school this coming September, the largest number for some time.
Nationwide delays to new school buildings
Mercy Convent Primary School is one of a number of schools across the country which are experiencing delays in the delivery of much needed new buildings.
The Department of Education has acknowledged “capital funding pressures” that arose in 2023.
It said an additional €405 million in supplementary funding has helped alleviate those pressures.
It has attributed the pressures to additional school places needed in areas of housing growth, special education provision “and also the accommodation of students from Ukraine in the school system”.
“This is a very significant rollout of the school building programme that is being delivered in a challenging construction sector environment,” the Department said in a statement.
On Mercy Convent Primary School, the Department of Education has confirmed that the original contract was terminated “due to issues on site”.
It has said that analysis and review of the latest tender report – for completion of the building – is at an advanced stage. This will be the third contract issued for this school.
“The next step in relation to the project is the authorisation to issue the Letter of Intent to the successful tenderer,” the Department said.
“Once the contractor has been appointed, it is expected that it will take approximately 15 months to complete the project.”
